Position in chronology
SAA 06 294. Purchase of Slaves (ADD 0268)
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 6(Beginning destroyed) (1) Sagibî, weaver, and his wife; (2) Se'-nuri, his wife and two daughters; (3) a total of 6 per[sons, servants of NN] (Break) (r 1) [Witness Ah]u-duri, son of Pa[...]. (r 2) Witness Hamnanu, chariot driver. (r 3) Witness Adad-rahim, 'third man.' (r 4) Witness Zanzanu, cohort commander. (r 5) Witness Gabrî, ditto. (r 6) Witness Mannu-ki-Libbali, keeper of the tablet. (r 8) Month Ab (V), 22nd day, (Rest destroyed)
State Archives of Assyria, volume 6 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
msa-gi-bi-i LÚ.UŠ.BAR MÍ-šú / mse-eʾ—nu-ri MÍ-šú 02 DUMU.MÍ?-MEŠ-[šú] / PAB 06 ⸢ZI⸣-[MEŠ ARAD-MEŠ] / ša md[x x x x] / [IGI m]⸢PAB⸣—BÀD DUMU mpa-[x x x] / IGI mḫa-am-na-nu LÚ.mu-kil—KUŠ.[PA-MEŠ] / IGI m10—ra-ḫi-mu LÚ.03.U₅ / IGI mza-an-za-nu LÚ.GAL—ki-ṣir / IGI mgab-ri-i LÚ.KI.MIN / IGI mman-nu—ki—URU.ŠÀ—URU / ṣa-bit ṭup-pu / ITI.NE UD 22-KÁM
Scholarly note
Neo-Assyrian legal transaction at the royal court of Nineveh, edited by Theodore Kwasman & Simo Parpola (SAA 6, 1991). ORACC text P335215.
Attribution
Image: Adapted from Theodore Kwasman and Simo Parpola , Legal Transactions of the Royal Court of Nineveh, Part I: Tiglath-Pileser III through Esarhaddon (State Archives of Assyria, 6), 1991. Lemmatised by Melanie Groß, 2010–2011, as part of the FWF-funded research project "Royal Institutional Households in First Millennium BC Mesopotamia" (S 10802-G18) directed by Heather D. Baker at the University of Vienna. The annotated edition is released under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license 3.0. Please cite this page as http://oracc.org/saao/P335215/..
Translation excerpted from Kwasman, T. & Parpola, S. 1991. Legal Transactions of the Royal Court of Nineveh, Part I: Tiglath-Pileser III through Esarhaddon. SAA 6. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa06/P335215/.
Related tablets
Related sources
One of the earliest specimens of human writing. Not literature, not law — accounting. The need to keep track of grain in a temple bureaucracy is what pushed marks-on-clay into a system that could one day carry epics.
The earliest historical document in human history. Before this, we have lists, accounts, and dedications. Here, for the first time, a ruler tells us what happened — with names, places, and consequences.
The oldest surviving law code in human history. The principle that the state — not the wronged family — defines and enforces justice begins here.